AUGUST PLAYLIST

Standing In The Shadows: Little Ann

1.  Big Jay McNeely and his Band – ‘Psycho Serenade’ (1959)

On the appropriately named Swingin’ label, Little Sonny Warner takes the lead vocal and battles against creaking doors, laughing gibbons, general nuttiness and jittery rhythms on this madcap 45.

2.  Little Ann – ‘Deep Shadows’ (1967)

Sounds like in was recorded in a Detroit tin shack but Little Ann’s truly stunning vocal will stop you in your tracks and tear straight to your heart. Phenomenal and rightly something of a belated classic.

3.  Art Butler – ‘Soul Brother’ (1968)

The name might not be familiar but Artie Butler had a hand in a humongous number of hits from ‘Leader Of The Pack’, ‘Chapel Of Love’, ‘Solitary Man’ to ‘What A Wonderful Life’ and beyond. Here he lets loose on the Hammond for surely the funkiest, grooviest go-go few minutes of his career.

4.  Slim Harpo – ‘The Hippy Song’ (1969)

“Let me tell you something, long hair don’t make you bad”. Check out old Slim here rooting for the hippies and sticking it to the high society moneymen shortly before he died.  “It’s wasn’t those long-haired hippies who killed the president”. Go Slim!

5.  Kim Fowley – ‘Animal Man’ (1968)

A white-knuckle magic carpet ride over a zoo of lunatics. From Fowley’s Outrageous LP.

6.  Lee Hazlewood – ‘Wait and See’ (1968)

The way Hazlewood sings “It’s gonna be all right, wait and see” must rank as one of the most soothing examples of the recorded voice ever made.

7.  Alice Clark – ‘Charms of the Arms of Love’ (1972)

“The pulse of time makes a terrible noise”, unlike the noise Ms Clark makes on this marvellous, strident slab of jazzy soul. (Note: if searching on Spotify it’s marked up incorrectly, so you'll need the one tagged as ‘Hard Hard Promises’).

8.  Julius Brockington – ‘Forty-Nine Reasons’ (1973)

Brockington was the hip organist but it’s Steve Turner’s funky flute that steals the show on the spacey closing track on The United Chair.

9.  Felt – ‘Ballad of the Band’ (1986)

Lawrence goes full-on ‘Positively 4th Street’ Dylan/Al Kooper on this smash miss single from 1986.

10.  The Greek Theatre – ‘Stray Dog Blues’ (2016)

From a new three-track 7-inch EP by Swedish combo who caused gentle ripples of delight from sensitive souls with Lost Out At Sea a couple of years ago. 'Paper Moon' is the lead track but it's this one which does it for me. Not so much stray dog blues but sleeping cat curled under the shade of the tree with a butterfly circling its head. Delicate, warm and beautiful. Available as part of Sunstone Records super-limited 150 Series. Get in quick.   

LAWRENCE OF BELGRAVIA (2012)

“I could be the first pop star pensioner. I’d be happy with that.”

Lawrence’s dream to be rich and famous, to live in a celebrity bubble, remains undiminished with time. Forming Felt at the dawn of 1980, he immediately assumed the status of a star in waiting – no surname necessary – and gallantly swished through the decade, convinced of his genius, releasing ten albums and ten singles before, with immaculate precision, closing the chapter as 1990 approached. Despite occasionally flirting with minor success – ‘Primitive Painters’ topping the independent charts in ’85 and providing Creation with a pop (near) masterpiece in Forever Breathes The Lonely World – their ten year mission to create “an underground/overground thing” was ultimately a commercial disaster.

Going full tilt at what Lawrence imagined would lead to mainstream success with Denim – the 90s viewed through the prism of his 70s childhood – began with being briefly touted as a flagbearer for an emerging Britpop but soon he was passed over once again and would be signing on rather than signing autographs for hysterical fans. After a period of freefall, he’s since settled on more modest ambitions as Go-Kart Mozart, something he describes as “the world’s first b-side band”.

Paul Kelly’s Lawrence of Belgravia, finally released on DVD by Heavenly Films, is a character study of one of music’s nearly-men (if music is judged by fame, and it is here) and plays more as a Channel 4 documentary than a BBC4 music biography. There are no talking heads espousing Lawrence’s influence on music or style; no musicians or colleagues offering a glimpse into his working practices, behaviour or personality; no grainy footage of Felt foppishly treading the boards at the Hammersmith Clarendon or Denim posing on Choppers. Instead the viewer takes a peak at the world through Lawrence’s eyes as he faces eviction from his flat while playing gigs, providing interviews, shopping for hats and creating the 2006 album Go-Kart Mozart On The Hot Dog Streets.

Lawrence, it’s fairly clear, isn’t made for these times. He’s a dedicated student of pop culture – a Lou Reed fanatic - who yearns for gangs of kids to paint his band’s name on the back of their jackets. He’s possesses, on the surface at least, an endearing mixture of naivety and childlike innocence. He’s incredulous when he discovers someone interviewing him doesn’t make money from his website. “Just for the love of it?” he wonders, wide-eyed. “I knew it was crap, the internet,” he says in his soft West Midlands accent. And yet this is someone who sent John Peel such a vitriolic letter Felt were scarcely heard on the radio and his current notebook contains details of small ad entry ‘Looking for love in an intimate relationship’ in which one of the things he is “into” as genital mutilation.

Kelly is sympathetic to his subject and personal issues regarding his finances, criminality, court appearances, drug use and mental health are skirted over, blink and you’ll miss them, as if impolite to pry, although with a noticeable sense of pride Lawrence does confide “I’m legally bonkers, you know” and rueing he wasn’t born in the 16^th century when he could’ve had a patron to fund his projects. With a degree of envy, he suggests he would be much better for Kate Moss than Pete Doherty and they could merge their money in a joint account, “She could put in all her millions and I could put in my dole money every two weeks”.

Money is a big issue, mainly because he’s never had any and yet even in poverty he still wears a Vivien Westwood tie and look like a pop star when painting walls. One thing he point blank refuses to entertain, for whatever money, is the idea of a Felt reunion although his reasons aren’t given.

But still Lawrence, keeps his eyes on the prize: craving fame, to be a millionaire and never have to travel by public transport. Whether this’ll happen with Go-Kart Mozart and their synthy 70s TV theme tune style and lyrics about the Queen Mum’s hip operation; drinking Um Bongo; scoring dope; and being “still susceptible to vaginas allure” remains to be seen but Lawrence’s indefatigable spirit will keep him going. Nobody has come this far and failed he notes. Enigmatic to the last, he’s no failure.

Lawrence of Belgravia is out now. 

JANUARY PLAYLIST

Some favourites this month.

1. Henry “The Hipster” Gibson – “Who Put The Benzedrine In Mrs Murphy’s Ovaltine?” (1944)
Mrs Murphy liked a cup of Ovaltine at night to help her sleep, until one night somebody spiked it with Benzedrine. Things were never quite the same again.

2. Screaming Gospel Chordettes – “I Can’t Believe It” (1958)
The Screaming Gospel Chordettes hurtle along chasing an organ accompaniment and surveying the troubles, wars, bloodshed and even sputniks around them.

3. The Alan Bown Set – “Jeu De Massacre” (1967)
Write a bunch of songs for a soundtrack album and then stich them together to make a single instead. The result is suitably madcap not least for the playground gun-shot sounds.

4. The Lloyd Alexander Real Estate – “Watcha’ Gonna Do (When Your Baby Leaves You)” (1967)
Swinging club soul from the Far East: Hackney.

5. Grahame Bond – “Moving Towards The Light” (1968)
By 1968 Graham had taken an E and in his music was all sunshine and flowers, make love not war. His Love Is The Law album is hippy Age of Aquarius claptrap from start to finish yet curiously engaging.

6. Felt – “I Will Die With My Head In Flames” (1986)
Felt’s ten albums neatly straddle the whole of the 80s; not that I was listening. Now, I hear the past and the future in them.

7. Morrissey – “I’ve Changed My Plea To Guilty” (1991)
When the Queen famously accused Morrissey of not being able to sing in 1986 he replied “that’s nothing, you should hear me play piano”. Unbelievers may scoff at the very thought, but here Moz – just backed with a piano – gives the vocal of his life.

8. The Pink Mountaintops – “The Gayest of Sunbeams” (2009)
When I was at school I was accused of making up bands. Whaddya mean you’ve never heard of the Direct Hits? This looks like I’ve made up the band and the song title.

9. Lumerians – “Burning Mirror” (2010)
Hold on tightly, we’re going for a white-knuckle lysergic ride.

10. The Electric Stars – “Between The Streets and The Stars” (2012)
How you view The Electric Stars will depend almost entirely on how you view the Brit-Pop era. “Between The Streets and The Stars” may have got lost in the scrum back then but now it's so out of step it almost sounds subversive. The chorus has most definitely infiltrated my brain.